Founder's Perspective on PingPlotter 5

I wrote PingPlotter's first line of code in early 1998 - in Borland's Delphi. That line of code probably doesn't exist in PingPlotter anymore, but version 4 of PingPlotter is still Delphi-based. The world has moved on from Delphi (some will argue it's not dead, but ...). PingPlotter has now too, with Version 5.

We started the ground-up rewrite of PingPlotter at the end of 2013, at the same time we started the transition to our new company, Pingman Tools. There's so much we wanted to keep in PingPlotter: the fast performance, the trustworthy data, the ability to send data to anyone, the ability to build a great case without having to be a network administrator or have control of the entire network. We also want to focus on empowering people - gamers, voip users, network administrators; you and me and our friends and neighbors. Companies are important users of our products, but primarily the people in the companies - people like you.

We also wanted to make improvements. I got tired of having to configure auto-save. I got (really) tired of having to answer the "You have a lot of data collected, do you want to save it?" question every time I rebooted or closed. The Windows Service method used in PingPlotter 3 and 4 is really not useful today (especially in Windows 10). There was a whole lot of complexity in a lot of places where 18 years of experience could be brought to bear just by doing the right thing in the first place.

A lot of what drives me, and drives the team at Pingman Tools, is making you the superhero - to give you the power to troubleshoot and solve internet problems. I love hearing your stories. These stories and relationships with you are what get me up in the morning and keep us driving for better products.

Version 5 of PingPlotter is the beginning of the future for us. It's a brand-new code base, with the important concepts and details of the past included. It's brimming with opportunity, and we're super excited to bring this to you. Please let us know your experience. Good or bad, we can hardly wait to hear.